The present invention relates generally to methods for reproducing and recreating original data.
Data storage, manipulation, and validation are of paramount concerns to application service providers and any organizations warehousing and validating large amounts of data. The ability to efficiently index, store, retrieve, compress, decompress, validate, and authenticate data permits organizations to reduce expenses associated with data storage while increasing any revenue associated with the data, since data access and validation are improved substantially.
By way of example only, consider an enterprise wide electronic mail system implemented within an organization where internal users are permitted to send and receive electronic mail messages to/from external electronic mail systems (e.g., the enterprise electronic mail system supports Internet access).
Even a relatively small enterprise electronic mail system, may typically experience thousands of mail message transmissions in any given day. Accordingly, if the mail system is not monitored closely by trained personnel, in order to migrate large amounts of data around the enterprise""s computing environment efficiently, then a substantial degradation of performance or total outages of the mail system could result.
Typically, an electronic mail message, before being transmitted from an external electronic mail system, will be translated to a standard format suitable for transmission. One such standard electronic message format is Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME). Various versions of MIME exist, such as by way of example only, Secure MIME or xe2x80x9cS/MIME.xe2x80x9d S/MIME permits the use of cryptographic security services to be used when transmitting messages/data. Some of the services which are supported by S/MIME include authentication, message integrity, non-repudiation of origin (e.g., digital signature), and privacy and data security (e.g., encryption).
When the message is received in the enterprise electronic mail system, the message is typically stored in its original format (e.g., the MIME or S/MIME, the format generated by the external electronic mail system). However, before the enterprise electronic mail system can use the message it must be translated from the original format to a native format which the enterprise electronic mail system supports. In this way, the enterprise electronic mail system will be capable of indexing, displaying, compressing, storing, searching, and retrieving the message in the native format. As a result the message will be stored a minimum of two times in the enterprise electronic mail system.
Further, any validation of the message must occur by retrieving the original format of the message from storage, since the native format of the message alters the data format associated with the message, the native format of the message may not be used to validate the signature or authenticity of the message. Accordingly, a number of additional processing operations must occur before validation may occur, since the internal users of the enterprise electronic mail system will be working with the native format of the message and not the original format or the message.
Moreover, electronic mail systems often use different data encoding schemes, and the compatibility of the various schemes may be rectified with aMIME message header data affixed to the front of message transmissions. These headers may include information such as, by way of example only, the type of encoding used in the message (e.g., character set used to encode the message, quoted printable, base 64, esc sequences, and the like).
Therefore, should an internal user respond or forward a message which was received from an external mail system, the message will be translated into MIME with different header data affixed thereto. This results in potentially a third storage of the message on the enterprise electronic mail system.
Further, MIME compatible data formats do not compress well and correspondingly the attempt to use data compression on MIME data will not save any substantial storage space. Yet, native format data used by enterprise electronic mail systems typically do compress native format data well, and native data are often compressed prior to being stored.
As one skilled in the art will appreciate, the ability to recreate an original data in an original data format, such as a mail message received from an external electronic mail system, would permit a receiving computing environment to save significant storage space and computing processing cycles. Further, any data transmission between disparate computing environments would benefit from the ability to dispose of received data in an original format, as long as the capability to recreate the same data in its original format on demand existed.
Accordingly, methods which efficiently permit the reproduction and the recreation of original data are needed, so that disparate computing environments may efficiently operate on data in a format native to each computing environment while still validating and restoring data to an original format when required. In this way, each computing environment may efficiently store, manipulate, and recreate data which are received and transmitted to disparate external computing devices.
Accordingly, an object of the invention is to provide methods for reproducing and recreating original data. Data are received in a first or original format and translated to a native data in a second or native format. Next, derivative data are generated from the native data in a first or original format, and by comparing the derivative data to original data, difference data are produced. The native data may be processed or indexed as desired in the native or second format, with the derivative data and the original data discarded. When desired, the original data may be recreated by using the difference data, the derivative data, and the native data.
Additional objectives, advantages and novel features of the invention will be set forth in the description that follows and, in part, will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon examining or practicing the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. To achieve the foregoing and other objects and in accordance with the purpose of the present invention, methods for reproducing and recreating original data are provided.
A method for reproducing original data having executable instructions is provided, comprising receiving original data in a first format and extracting therefrom native data in a second format. Further, derivative data are generated from the native data in a first format, and the derivative data are compared to the original data to produce difference data. The difference data combined with the native data may be used to create a replica of the original data.
Further, a method of recreating a replica of original data is provided having executable instructions, comprising receiving native data in a native format which are extracted from original data in an original format. Derivative data are generated from the native data in an original format, and reproduction of a replica of the original data is accomplished by using the derivative data and difference data, wherein the difference data identify differences between the derivative data and the original data.
Moreover, a method of creating a replica of original data is provided having executable instructions, comprising generating derivative data from native data wherein the derivative data are in the same format as original data. Difference data are produced which are operable to record the differences between the derivative data and the original data. A replica is created of the original data using the derivative data and the difference data.
Still other aspects of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following description of an exemplary embodiment, which is by way of illustration, one of the exemplary modes contemplated for carrying out the invention. As will be realized, the invention is capable of other different and obvious aspects, all without departing from the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and descriptions are illustrative in nature and not restrictive.